In computer systems, a large amount of data is stored in a storage device such as a disk device or a tape device. Most of the data in the storage device is periodically backed up to another storage device in case of data loss.
In an existing backup system, data is backed up in accordance with an instruction from a backup server, for example. A system administrator schedules backup jobs with his/her experience, and sets the schedule in the backup server. In accordance with the schedule, the backup server accesses a storage device and performs data backup.
In many cases, backup is performed during night because there are a few accesses to a disk device. During the backup, some backup jobs may be executed simultaneously. To this end, resources may be appropriately allocated to the backup jobs. For example, there is a technique of reserving resources for backup tasks on the basis of estimated utilization of the resources. Please refer to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-251001.
By the way, a storage device such as a disk device or tape device is capable of acquiring internal access information such as access frequency. By comparing the acquired access information with a backup source volume, efficiency of the entire process of the system may be improved. For example, the processing efficiency of the system as a whole may be improved by performing backup while data in a backup source storage device has low access frequency.
However, a function of collecting access information within a storage device and an application software product for management of a storage device do not acquire the execution state of backup, which prevents effective use of the access information acquired by the storage device for improving processing efficiency.